Oh the woes of the SME retail sector in Singapore. I’m sure you’ve read or heard about them.
Demanding consumers. Price competition. Sky high rentals. Relentless staff turnover (up to 300% a year in extreme cases). Difficulty in hiring. Competition from big chains. Rising utility costs. Increasing costs of goods. Growing transportation costs.
The list of problems faced by SME retailers is seemingly endless.
Courtesy of Kingford Hillview Peak
To buy or not to buy a condo? That is the question for many Singaporeans looking for new homes.
Riding on one of the most buoyant property markets in the region, private apartments has become one of the most discussed topics here. To slow down white hot demand, the government announced a seventh round of cooling measures on 12 January. More recently, Minister Khaw Boon Wan has also spoken about bringing government-built HDB flats back to their original purpose as homes rather than investments.
Was Borders a victim of Disruptive Innovation? (courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
Tower Records. Borders. Kodak. Maybe even Research In Motion (RIM)?
The list of casualties to disruptive innovations grow longer each day. By clinging to the status quo and failing to recognise the threats of disruptive consumer behaviours, technologies, or business models, these companies have sounded their own death knell.
GrabCar and Uber has disrupted taxis in Singapore and around the world (Courtesy of GrabCar)
Have you wondered how innovations can be “disruptive”? Or why entire industries can be wiped out with new entrants?
Last night, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong spoke about the impact of disruptive innovations during the National Day Rally Speech.
You need the right tool for the job (Swiss Army knife courtesy of Victorinox)
Productivity is one of the main prerogatives for Singapore’s service-based and export-driven economy.
Unfortunately, it is also one of the toughest challenges to surmount.
As I’ve blogged previously, addressing our productivity challenge entails understanding what it means. This involves studying how man, method, machine, material and other means are combined to generate wealth for the enterprise in the most effective and efficient manner. Through the careful analysis and diagnosis of problem areas, organisational productivity issues can be resolved.
Are you a struggling entrepreneur trying to juggle it all, but find it a tremendous challenge?
Well, perhaps it’s time for you to stop, take a step back, critically evaluate where your business is going, and read The E-Myth Revisited.
Din Tai Fung is a paragon of productivity (courtesy of Aroma Cookery)
Business as usual can no longer work in Singapore. We desperately need to change.
While we’ve enjoyed modest economic growth of 1.3% in 2012, and are estimated to experience 1% to 3% GDP growth this year, labour productivity declined by 2.6% last year. This wiped out productivity gains of 1.3% the year before, with the impact felt across manufacturing, construction and services sectors. Only the Info Comm sector experienced growth.
Shackleton’s ship Endurance (source of image)
Imagine being stranded on ice for 19 months in the world’s harshest climate, often without light for months on end.
Imagine being cut off from the outside world without any forms of communication. No smartphones, tablets, laptops, telephones or faxes. Heck, not even a telegraph machine or carrier pigeon!
Following the box office success of Ah Boys to Men, local filmmaker Jack Neo’s Ah Boys to Men 2 has scaled new heights as the top grossing local film of all time. Based on the exploits of Recruit Ken Chow (Joshua Tan) and his platoon mates Wayang King (Maxi Lim), Lobang (Wang Weiliang) and I P Man (Noah Yap), the movie is filled with laugh-a-minute moments infused with patriotic messages about what it means to defend our country.
Colonel Sanders opened his first KFC at the age of 65 (courtesy of the Bluegrass Historian)
Like it or not, we’re becoming a greying population.
With low fertility rates of 1.2, the ratio of young to elderly Singaporeans would decline in the decades to come. This has been highlighted as a critical problem in the much talked about White Paper on the Population, and a reason why we need to augment our population through immigration and to bolster our businesses through skilled foreign workers.
